Vladimir Putin wins his own election

President Vladimir Putin, according to Sunday polls of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) and FOM, at the exit from the polling stations, was confidently re-elected for a fourth term. Self-promoted Putin received from 74 to 77%, the second was the candidate of the Communist Party Pavel Grudinin (11-12%), ahead of the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky (6 and 7%) with almost double the advantage. Ksenia Sobchak (1.8 and 2.5%) and the founder of Yabloko Grigory Yavlinsky (0.9 and 1.6%) took the 4th and 5th places in both surveys.

After processing 70% of the vote, Vladimir Putin's result reached 75.92%. In second place - the candidate from the Communist Party Pavel Grudinin from 12.59%. The third - the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 6.07%. In Sobchak - 1,48%, the rest - less than one. Most actively voted for Putin Kabardino-Balkaria - 93.49%, Tyva - 92.19%, Dagestan - 91.11% and Sevastopol - 90.31. The president received the least support in the Far East - in Primorsky Krai only 65.3% of voters voted for him and as of 23.00 it was the lowest result. Less than 70% of Putin received in the Khabarovsk Territory and the Amur region, in the Altai and in the Jewish Autonomous Region. It is noteworthy that just in these regions was the highest level of support for Grudinin. And most of all votes - 27.25% - he scored in Yakutia.

The CEC did not announce the final appearance yet. Compared to the 2012 elections, it was 3-6% higher throughout the day, but up to 70% of the cherished Kremlin formula "70 by 70" (70% turnout and 70% for Putin) probably did not last.

The high turnout is due to the fact that Putin spent a strong campaign ending - from the message to active trips around the country, meetings with people, the director of ISEPI Dmitry Badovsky believes. But the main influence on the voters was provided by the international situation in recent months - from the situation with the Olympics to the scandal with the UK, he is sure: "There has been a sharp increase in the perception of elections as referendums and the need to unite around the leader, which worked both on the percentage of turnout and the percentage of candidates" . "The unprecedented pressure of the outside world on Russia made the Russians close their ranks and unite around the authorities," political analyst Andrei Kolyadin agreed.

A high mobilization effect was given by unprecedented propaganda, political scientist Andrei Kolesnikov said: "The sensation of civic duty awoke, the need to execute the ritual of civil responsibility was connected, all this coincided with the vote for a single candidate." The number of budget employees, driven by the administrative resource, exceeded the figures for 2012, the expert continues.

The main figure is the verdict for candidates who conducted a colorless, mediocre campaign, political scientist Alexander Kynev said: "Heroes were not among them, the campaigns were organized monstrously. To say that someone had conducted a good campaign and received fewer votes - there are none. I do not feel sorry for anyone. "

Battle for appearance

In the morning, the Central Election Commission hastened to announce the highest turnout in the presidential election in the last 18 years: at 10.00 it was 16.55%, CEC chairman Ella Pamfilova said. In 2000, it was at this time 6.36%, in 2004 - 8.01%, in 2008 - 8.94% and in 2012 - 6.53%. Almost immediately it became clear that the CEC had announced real-time data for Russia as a whole, and the indicators of past years were fixed in local time, rather than as a cumulative result. With this measurement system, the indicators of 2018 (9.79%) looked much more modest - the increase by 2012 was only 5.8 percentage points.

During the day, the gap narrowed to 3.5 pp: at 6.00 pm (at GAS "Vybory" the last measure is introduced), the turnout was 60.19% compared to 56.72% in 2012. Taking into account that in 2012 for the last two hours the total turnout increased by 8.6%, then its final figure could reach 68-69% this time, which is close to 70%, which Vedomosti's interlocutors close to the Kremlin called desirable.

The voters of the Yamalo-Nenets District, Kabardino-Balkaria and Tuva showed the highest activity (over 80%) at 6 pm. In Chechnya, compared to 2012, by that time 16 voters voted lower by 16 pp, and by 13 pp in Karachaevo-Cherkessia. However, the regions that had not been very rash before showed active growth in turnout: the chairman of the Moscow City Committee Valentin Gorbunov 16 hours reported about 40.19% - 6 percentage points higher than in 2012. Increase in turnout by 10 percentage points and more showed Kabardino-Balkaria, Chuvashia, Lipetsk and Tambov regions.

According to the political scientist Mikhail Vinogradov, several factors could have influenced the growth of voters' activity: the activation of the psychology of the Soviet man with his responsible attitude to the elections, the activation of the administrative resource, the growing interest in the campaign at the expense of the local agenda - in many regions there was a discussion of improvement and other important topics .

Kolyadin puts the CEC, administration and technologists to work. Political scientist Yevgeny Minchenko counted seven components of success, the most important - cleaning the lists of voters, corporate mobilization and an active information campaign.

Hunting to change places

Coercion to participate in the voting has become one of the most common violations in this campaign, said Gregory Melkonyants, co-chairman of the Golos movement. For a general mobilization, a new voting mechanism was used at the place of stay: employees of enterprises were obliged to attach themselves to work and to vote under supervision. People were forced to take absentee ballots earlier, but this time the practice took on a special dimension - it was not necessary to personally appear behind the absentee, Melkonyants explains: "We saw that internal migration first of all grew up - up to 4.5 million people were detached and attached within the same region. Among the sites with a large number of people attached, as a rule, those located on the territory and next to the student dormitories, colleges, large enterprises. "

There is also no evidence that the new mechanism is protected from fraud. A resident of Moscow Region, Odintsov and a member of the TIC of the Mitino district, Yabloko Pavel Melnikov was able to vote twice: where he was attached, and at his home site, where he was not deleted from the lists. "I decided that for the experiment you need to go all the way," he explained. Melnikov did not hide the result, the story quickly broke up in social networks. Deputy CEC Nikolai Bulaev promised to promptly transfer materials to law enforcement agencies, but did not explain how it became possible to re-vote - earlier in the CEC repeatedly assured that it was out of the question. By the end of the day, Melnikov had drafted a protocol on Part 2 of Art. 5.22 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (receiving the ballot more than once in the course of the same ballot), and he was forcibly taken to the world court.

Common violations

Pamfilova promised in the morning to disassemble all complaints in real time: "We will not allow this campaign to be mired in pseudo-falsifications." Violations, she said, were few and all the important CEC reacted. The Moscow Regional Committee also reported that it had not revealed any significant violations, and explained the reports on the supply of voters to the plots by Gorbunov's initiative, which had been allocated special buses for this purpose.

The main violations noted by observers on the voting day turned out to be traditional: ballot stuffing, voter transfer, inadmissibility and removal of observers from polling stations, problems with voter lists. A lot of complaints were filed by people who did not find themselves on the voter lists, says Melkonyants: "Apparently, they overdid it with cleaning the lists." For example, in St. Petersburg, according to the head of the network of regional headquarters Ksenia Sobchak Timur Valeyeva, her mother Lyudmila Narusova was not found. With the defeated there was confusion, they were not deleted from the lists, confirmed the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Sergei Obukhov. And the headquarters of Aleksei Navalnogo reported about observer-twins appearing on the precincts before the present representatives of candidates, such a situation was in the Krasnodar Territory.

On some violations, the CEC reacted demonstratively harshly. In the Vladimir region, the PEC chair was removed from office, where the voting began 10 minutes before the deadline. In Moscow Region, Lyubertsy Mosoblizbirk confirmed the fact of ballot stuffing with the participation of the chairman and member of the PEC and removed them from work. In Dagestan, ballot stuffing was suspected, said chairman of the electoral commission of the republic Magomed Dibirov: "In connection with this, two boxes are sealed, but in order not to interrupt the voting process, we put others there."